Krishi Premura Properties vows to pay interest to banks
KATHMANDU, NOV 10 -
Krishi Premura Properties, which had been developing JSB Financial Tower until its promoter Rakesh Adukiya went into hiding after the central bank found him to be involved in banking fraud, has promised to pay the outstanding interest on its bank loans within the third week of November.
The company has borrowed Rs 270 million from a loose consortium of Sunrise Bank, Bank of Asia Nepal (BoA) and Prime Commercial Bank to build the financial complex at Kamaladi, Kathmandu. These banks have provided Rs 90 million each to the company.
Krishi Premura Properties now plans to sell the five ropanis of land where the proposed tower would be constructed to repay its bank loans. Pointing out the technical problems in selling the plot, the company wrote to Sunrise Bank on Oct 31 stating that it would pay the outstanding interest within three weeks even if it cannot sell it as planned.
On Oct 30, Sunrise Bank had written to Krishi Premura Properties to pay the instalment for the first quarter of the current fiscal year. According to the banks concerned, the company had been repaying its loans regularly until Adukiya went on the run.
It has paid the interest to both Sunrise and Prime until the last fiscal year, and now it has to repay the loans of the first quarter of this year. However, it is yet to pay the interest on its loan to Bank of Asia (BoA) Nepal for Q4 of the last fiscal year and Q1 of this year, according to BoA CEO Parshuram Kuwar Kshetry.
Adukiya has been in hiding since his involvement in misappropriating a huge amount of money at Gurkha Development Bank was revealed. Despite being a promoter of Gurkha, he had got financing of Rs 300 million under the pretext of selling the land owned by Krishi Premura to the bank.
In a letter, copies of which were sent to Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), BoA and Prime Bank, Krishi Premura has reminded them that it was planning to sell the land at Kamaladi put up as collateral to repay the loans.
However, the prospective buyer of the land, which is still under the name of Shubham Investment, wants it to be transferred to Krishi Premura Properties before buying it. Although the name Shubham Investment was changed to Krishi Premura Properties, the land title deed still mentions Shubham Investment as the owner, which is delaying the process, according to the letter.
The company has also urged the banks concerned to help it sell the land by facilitating ownership change. The central bank has frozen all the properties in the name of Adukiya and his firms. However, it allows loanees to sell the collateral for the purpose of repaying their loans.
Sunrise CEO Surendra Man Pradhan said that he was hopeful that the company would repay the loans within the next two weeks as it is prepared to sell the land. “As the market price of the collateral is at least Rs 550 million to Rs 600 million, we are confident that our loans will be recovered even by auctioning the land,” he added.
General manager of Prime Bank Sanjeev Manandhar is optimistic too. “The company had been paying the loan instalments regularly until the last fiscal year, and we are hopeful that the loan will be recovered eventually,” he said. However, BoA, which has not received the final instalment for the last fiscal year, is not so confident that the company will repay the loans. “We will go for auctioning the land if the loan is not repaid within a few weeks,” said Kshetry.
Source: Kantipur
